Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's victory in Brazil's presidential runoff Oct. 25 signals an aggressive effort ahead to move the country up the metals value chain.
Lula received 51.79% of the vote, while the Liberal Party's Flávio Bolsonaro received 48.21%, according to results from Brazil's Superior Electoral Court.
"Brazil is the leading economy in Latin America and carries enormous political, economic and commercial weight," Daniel Dreizzen, managing director of mining consultancy Aleph Energy, said Oct 26. "Its decisions influence the entire region."
Lula's policy agenda emphasizes national sovereignty, domestic industrialization and capturing more value from Brazil's natural resources through domestic refining and industrial capacity.
That approach is particularly relevant to critical minerals: In September, Lula signed into law Brazil's National Policy on Critical and Strategic Minerals, which seeks to encourage domestic processing and industrialization rather than exports of unprocessed minerals.
"We will not accept critical minerals and rare earths leaving the country in their raw state at derisory prices, repeating past mistakes," Lula said in a post on X after the Senate approved the critical minerals framework he championed. The framework supports investment in mineral research, extraction and processing.
"South American energy integration must be approached with a long-term vision, regardless of changes in government," Dreizzen said. "We are talking about investments worth billions of dollars, infrastructure built to last for several decades, and contracts that require predictability."
In contrast, a Bolsonaro victory could have prioritized attracting foreign investment and brought Brazil's mining policy closer to the direction seen in other South American countries.
